


Promises

by Living_Underground



Category: The X-Files
Genre: But she doesn't know it yet, Episode: s07e22 Requiem (X-Files), F/M, Missing Scene, i honestly don't know how to tag this one, it's very dialogue heavy, pregnant scully, the scene when she comes to him feeling dizzy, they have talks, you know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28228119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Living_Underground/pseuds/Living_Underground
Summary: Mulder and Scully in bed in that scene in Requiem, talking about children and death and promises
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	Promises

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as something three months ago and I smashed out like 80% in the middle of the night and then I fell asleep and completely forgot about it and thought I posted it, and then I realised I hadn't and came back to it today and realised I had no idea where I was actually going with it because I completely forgot what the initial goal of the piece was. That's why the ending's a little rough. It doesn't actually really have a plot. At all. It's really just an extension of the scene we already have.

He was focused on flicking through the photos from the case in an all too familiar motel room when he was interrupted by a knock on the door, ‘who is it?’

‘It's me,’ Scully’s voice, weaker than usual. When he pulled the door open she was stood there, blouse rumpled and untucked, face pallid and breath coming in ragged and shaky.

One look could tell him she wasn’t well, ‘what's wrong, Scully? You look sick,’ he opened the door wider, running his eyes over her, trying to check her for any obvious injuries. Other than her unsteady breathing and her hunched shoulders, he couldn’t see anything physically the matter.

‘I don't know what's wrong,’ her voice was scared, worried, and his mind flashed back to a hospital room years back, hollow cheeks and chapped lips, skin that faded to the pale white of bedsheets.

‘Come in,’ he drew her close as he shut the door, guiding her over to the bed and crouching in front over her. She huddled in on herself, body trembling and shuddering.

‘I, um... I was starting to get ready for bed and I started to feel really dizzy-- vertigo or something-- and then I just... I started to get chills,’ her words are breathy, exhaustion laced throughout, and he felt wisps of panic grasp at his chest as he watched her eyelids droop, her shoulders slump.

He turned the blankets down, made space for her, an open invitation. ‘You want me to call a doctor?’

‘No, I just... I just want to get warm.’

He could see the strength it was taking her to move as she climbed into the bed, and he slipped her shoes off for her before tucking her in, curling up behind her, engulfing her in his arms. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head, one to her shoulder, and if she weren’t shivering so violently he could imagine it was any other night.

‘Thank you.’

He held onto her, nestled his face next to hers, curled himself around her as much as possible, tried to breathe warmth into her and stop her quaking, ‘it's not worth it, Scully.’ He wonders, briefly, if she’s still awake when she doesn’t respond, but he can feel her frown, and wonders then if he’s upset her.

‘What?’

‘I want you to go home,’ he hadn’t seen her like this since her cancer and it was just one more reminder that in pursuit of his cause he had dragged her along behind him, doing nothing to slow down as his velocity and his obstacles tore at her.

She huffed a soft chuckle, ‘oh, Mulder, I'm going to be fine,’ her tone placating, and he knew she was thinking only that he wanted her to go home from this case, not go home from the X-files completely.

He’d been considering it on and off ever since she asked him to father her child, usually just a fleeting thought every once in a blue moon. But then, since the night she crawled into his bed, into his arms, he’d been considering it more and more. She’d been lighter, happier this last year than he’d seen since he first met her, and with his entire being he didn’t want her to lose that too – she’d already lost far too much, given up so much of her life for him. He couldn’t have her give up anything more, especially not her happiness. ‘No, I've been thinking about it. Looking at you tonight, holding that baby... knowing everything that's been taken away from you. A chance for motherhood and your health and that baby. I think that... I don't know, maybe they're right.’

‘Who's right?’

They. The constant, ever-present They that had been trying to split them up since almost immediately after they had thrust them together. ‘The FBI. Maybe what they say is true, though for all the wrong reasons. It's the personal costs that are too high,’ he couldn’t help thinking of her, hands splayed on a taut belly, lips pressed to a soft head of red curls, singing terribly with a love that only a parent can muster despite it being the middle of the night, chasing a toddler through the park, her laugh echoing around. He wonders when he feels the dampness of her tears hit his hand and her snuffle as she tries to stifle them if she sees the same images he does, if somehow they are imaging the same life together; if she sees his hands rubbing her swollen feet, bubbles sculpted into a beard and Mohican at bath time, soft bedtime stories of bigfoot and the friendly aliens from the stars in the sky, playing on swing sets and picnicking in the summer. ‘There’s so much more you need to do with your life. There's so much more than this.’

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, held her as she shook for a completely different reason and brushed away her tears, pressed a kiss to her ear before whispering a soft, ‘there has to be an end, Scully.’

She took his hand, pressed her lips to it, dragged in a ragged breath, ‘you are my end, Mulder.’

‘Scully,’ he sighed, and she rolled over to face him, shaking her head, tears spilling.

‘No, Mulder. Don’t you understand? There’s not going to be any babies. My chance at motherhood was taken from me and I want justice for that. I don’t want to sit back and give up. If I can’t have children then I at least want justice, and I want to get that justice with you. The truth isn’t just yours anymore, it’s mine too.’

‘But- Scully, I couldn’t live with myself if they took anything more from you-‘

‘And you think I could live with myself if they took anything more from you? Mulder, you lost your sister, you lost your faith, you lost your mother and your father and so many other things. I’m not the only one who’s lost things, and I don’t want your guilt for that. I’m not leaving you, Mulder. Not until you don’t want me anymore. Not until you find someone younger and prettier and able to have children and fulfil any needs I can’t. Only then will I leave you.’

‘That won’t happen.’

She smiled sadly and pressed her forehead to his, ‘don’t promise me that, Mulder. Making it easier, for now, will only make it harder when it happens, and it will happen. I’ll be gracious when it does. I’ll accept it. Who knows, I might even like her,’ a soft, humourless chuckle.

‘Don’t joke about that.’

‘I wasn’t really joking, Mulder.’

‘Scully, we’ve grown old together once, we can do it again. I just…I want you to know I’m not holding you to anything.’

‘I know.’

‘And, you know, there are other ways to have children. We could adopt?’ the last time they’d discussed adoption was years back, in a hospital over a sick, dying little girl with dimpled cheeks and her mother’s smile.

She shook her head sadly, ‘no, Mulder. You know how it turned out last time.’

‘But this time you’re in a relationship – a committed relationship, might I add – and…Emily- Emily was sick and she was created by the syndicate, under their grasp. Maybe we can try again, together?’ He could tell, the more eager and hopeful he found himself getting, the more her heart was breaking, and the squeezing in his chest didn’t let up until she nudged his nose with her own, gave him a quirk of her lips.

‘Why don’t we talk about it some more when we’re back home, when we know what’s happening with the X-files?’ it was a brush off, a request to talk about it later – a later that would never actually happen. He knew that. She’d been through too much heartbreak already, didn’t want to put herself through any more. So he nodded, acquiesced, touched his lips to hers. Held her tight. She’d stopped shivering at some point during their conversation, and the rapid flutter of her heart had slowed to the regular beat he knew like his own.

‘Feeling better?’

‘Mm, a little.’

‘Good. Want to stay here tonight?’ She nodded, snuggling into him further, burrowing her face into his chest, curling into his warmth. ‘Do you think you should go see a doctor when we get home?’

‘Mulder, I’m fine. Seriously. I’m probably just coming down with the flu.’

‘You want a t-shirt to sleep in?’

‘Uh-huh.’

He sat up and shucked his own off as she peeled her blouse and bra off, wriggling from her slacks whilst still in the warmth of the covers. She slipped into his tee whilst he dropped his jeans and chucked them to land haphazardly by his suitcase, sliding under the covers and flicking the lamp off. ‘Scully?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Promise me that if you have any nosebleeds you’ll tell me straight away?’

She propped herself up on her elbow, looked down at his face in the dark, ‘I don’t think I’m dying, Mulder.’

‘You’ve got to promise me.’

‘I’ll only promise if you promise that if – and this is a big _if_ – the cancer has come back, you don’t do anything stupid. You just hold me when I need holding and you stay alive for me.’

‘I- I can’t- Scully, I can’t promise that.’

‘Mulder,’ she whispered, bringing a thumb to his lips, ‘you have to.’

He studied her for a long moment before nodding. ‘Okay.’

‘You promise?’

‘Yeah. You?’

‘I promise too,’ she smiled sadly, dropped a kiss to his lips as she settled back down into his embrace.

She’d wake, halfway through the night, a bout of nausea pulling her to the bathroom as her knuckles whitened on the porcelain of the toilet seat, a husked ‘told you it was stomach flu’ as she brought up her dinner and he held her hair away from her face, rubbed her back, mopped her forehead with a cool facecloth.

By the time she was told it wasn’t, in fact, stomach flu, he was Gone with a capital G, and she was carrying the last of the Mulder bloodline.

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to be working on the two Christmassy fics that I'm working on, but also I don't want to work on either of them so I finished this instead.


End file.
